The Ferryman

Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology

The OpenTox workshop on "Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology" to be held at the ISS in Rome 10-11 September 2009. 

Participants at the workshop will involve cross-industry users and regulatory experts in addition to solution developers and providers who will discuss the requirements and use cases of users in chemical toxicology evaluation and risk assessment, and including satisfaction of current and future requirements of the REACH legislation using alternative testing methods. The workshop format involves short presentations to provide user, regulatory and solution needs perspectives, followed by knowledge cafe discussions discussing use cases, challenges, issues, solutions, collaboration opportunities and ways forward in small groups.

PROGRAM

Thursday 10 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Introduction & Workshop Overview, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

09.15 The Use of Computational Methods for the in silico  Prediction of Chemical Properties in REACH, Andrew P Worth (Systems Toxicology Unit, Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, European Commission -Joint Research Centre, Italy)

09.40 Automated Workflows for Hazard Assessment, Elena Fioravanzo (S-IN Soluzioni Informatiche, Italy)

10.05 OpenTox Predictive Toxicology Use Cases, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

10.30 Coffee Break

11.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.30 Group Discussion

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Opportunities for using  Systems Biology Data for in silico  Modeling of Personalized Medicine, Richard D. Beger  (Division of Systems Toxicology, National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, USA)

14.25 A Framework for Using Structural, Reactivity, Metabolic and Physicochemical Similarity to Evaluate the Suitability of Analogs for SAR-based Toxicological Assessments, Joanna Jaworska (Procter & Gamble, Modeling & Simulation, Biological Systems, Brussels Innovation Center, Belgium)

 14.50 Integration of Integrated Assessment Tools for Environmental Risk Assessment, Willie Peijnenburg (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands)

15.15 Prediction of Animal Toxicity Endpoints for ToxCAST Phase I Compounds using a Combination of Chemical and Biological in vitro Descriptors, Alex Tropsha (Carolina Center for Computational Toxicology and Carolina Environmental Bioinformatics Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)

15.40 Coffee Break

16.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

17.30 Group Discussion

18.00 Close

 

Friday 11 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Predictive Toxicology for Cosmetics - An Industry Perspective, Stephanie Ringeissen (Safety Research Department, L’Oréal R&D, France)

09.25 OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox: Progress and Ongoing Developments, (OECD, Paris, France)

09.50 Italian Specialty Chemical Industry Perspective on Predictive Toxicology, Maurizio Colombo (Health & Safety Evaluation, Industrial Regulation Management, Lamberti S.p.A., Italy)

10.15 Coffee Break

10.45 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.00 Group Discussion

12.30 Lunch

13.30 The Italian Chemical Industry and the REACH impact on SMEs, Antonio Conto (Chemsafe Srl, Italy)

13.55 Classification- and Regression-Based QSAR of Chemical Toxicity on the Basis of Structural and Physicochemical Similarity, Oleg Raevsky (Department of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia)

14.20 Analysis of Toxcast Data and in vitro / in vivo Endpoint Relationships, Romualdo Benigni (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy)

14.45 Coffee Break

15.15 Knowledge Café Discussions

16.30 Group Discussion

17.00 Close

More Information including Abstracts:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoprome09

Growing significance of communities and collaboration in discovery and development

Just saw an article I wrote for Future Science has come out as a Perspective:

Growing significance of communities and collaboration in discovery and development
Barry Hardy, Future Medicinal Chemistry, June 2009, Vol. 1, No. 3, Pages 435-449.
http://www.future-science.com/toc/fmc/1/3

Sorry, but I don't have the budget just right now to take the Open Access option, but there is some other open material available at the above link.

In summarising the drivers for the growing significance of communites and collaboration I introduced:

The benefits of community participation or collaboration should outweigh the costs to support a rational decision to pursue such routes.  Lions usually prefer to hunt as a group as the shared food from group kills offers a better return and lower risk than hunting alone; in a similar manner organisations may also choose to collaborate to have greater success in acquiring new resources or income. The current convergence of a number of factors appears to be driving up the R&D collaboration benefit/cost ratio. The drivers include:

1.      Scientific research is becoming more complex and multi-disciplinary, requiring researchers to move more away from “working in the expert’s box”.

2.      Our work, economy and society are becoming more knowledge-oriented. (I define knowledge here as including understanding gained from experience and involves individual and collective knowledge in addition to explicit knowledge such as intellectual property (IP).)

3.      Business models in the chemistry and pharmaceutical industry that worked fine historically, e.g., manufacturing products based predominantly on patents related to chemistry, appear to be increasingly lacking.

4.      The goals of translational and personalized medicine have stronger requirements for networked and collaborative approaches over discipline and time than the historically relatively linear drug discovery and development process.  Integrated services offer greater future value creation than stand-alone products.

5.      Patient Safety has become an issue of growing concern requiring new more integrative approaches to data, knowledge and disciplines.

6.      Computational Science continues to grow in importance, fueling overlaps and interactions between scientific disciplines including that of computer science.

7.      The maturing of the Internet-based World Wide Web including enhanced usability, services, social software and the semantic web, provide new community and collaboration resource opportunities.

8.      Challenging problems we face as a race such as global warming, energy management, population growth, and sustainable development are often linked to healthcare issues and are demonstrating the need and benefit for greater cooperation and at larger scales.

9.      Continuing education and learning throughout life has been growing in importance as knowledge workers go through greater numbers of career and job changes than in the industrial age.

10.  Work can increasingly be done anywhere on the planet where the best combination of costs and skills are available.  As Thomas Friedman discussed in his recent book, the “world is now flat” (1). A work objective can be broken into a workflow of numerous tasks, each of which may be done in different locations or by different organizations or individuals.

And I will add three more uncertain or controversial factors here:

11.  There is a growing importance of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) collaborating in knowledge-oriented activity and growth in the global economy.

12.  As our modern life seems increasingly less rewarding beneath the surface, we need, search for and find new happiness from the benefits of taking advantage of new collaboration opportunities through interacting with others more.  In addition to needing better conversations for learning, work and self-development, we also simply need them psychologically and to feel good.  (Happier workers are also more productive ones.)

13.  Enabling international cooperation, collaboration and knowledge transfer in socio-economic areas such as healthcare, including building shared cultural meaning between different countries, races and cultures will significantly progress the security and prosperity of the world we leave to our children, whereas other current flawed political, military and unsustainable economic strategies will not.

Welcome your feedback and additions...

The Ferryman

(1) Friedman TL, “The World is Flat”, Picador, (2005).

Dear Michael, Thanks, Respects and Inspiration to you (Michael Jackson)

Thanks Michael for all those great music videos in the 80's.  You were a leader, an innovator, doing completely new and great things back then.  You entertained us when we took a break from our studies in college in the early 80s, and tried out this new MTV experience at the time.  (It was much more interesting back then!)  You were a Thriller!

Respects to you Michael, we played and danced to your songs last night, and were not alone.

Inspiration Michael, if we can take inspiration from your tragedy and Childhood legacy you could not shake off, it is that we should take some more time to reach out to our family, friends and contacts.  Even if it is that business partner, don't just always email them, get on the Skype with them, talk and get some understanding, build some shared meaning, reach out and support. As you said:

You are not alone, I am here with you
Though you're far away, I am here to stay
You are not alone, I am here with you
Though we're far apart, You're always in my heart

And if you want to collaborate folks in this flatter world don't be alone and far away. Reach out!

The Ferryman

Collaboration in Drug Discovery and Development

I am co-chairing with Peter Gates (Johnson & Johnson) a forum session on Collaboration in Drug Discovery and Development which will take place on October 12-13 to kick-off the InnovationWell 2009 Community of Practice Meeting, which will be hosted at Bryn Mawr College (near Philadelphia) the week of October 12-16, 2009.

The specific goals of the forum are to discuss developments in collaboration support including:

- the challenges and requirement complexities across time, function and organizational spaces
- key ingredients for combined collaboration and innovation success
- promising practices, models, and solutions for collaboration
- service requirements for flexibility, evolution, and learning characteristics
- accounting for structural and business model changes in the healthcare industry environment
- key requirements and directions for collaboration infrastructure
- potential and actions for collaborative approaches to collaboration infrastructure development

Research is by its nature a set of disciplines that are undergoing constant change. Development in contrast, largely due to safety considerations, is a set of disciplines that are looking for stability, reliability and consistency. We must add to this the scale in terms of resources and duration of the pharmaceutical research and development process.

These factors combine to create formidable challenges in the creation of effective collaborative strategies. We will discuss specifically the need to build support for collaboration where change and adaptability are requirements that must be specifically engineered into our collaborative solutions.

The goal of the forum is to bring together a variety of perspectives to discuss the opportunities, challenges, practices and solutions required for successful collaboration in advancing drug discovery and development goals in an increasingly collaborative virtualized environment. We call on participants to consider a diversity of perspectives to include technical, business, scientific, medical, intellectual property, culture, and knowledge management viewpoints.

A Knowledge Café involving all forum participants will be used to have an extensive discussion of experiences and opinions.

Speakers can also submit a perspective manuscript before the meeting for refereed publication in a special focus issue to be published by the Future Science Group in Future Medicinal Chemistry in early 2010, for which Peter and I as chairs will also act as guest editors for, and to which we also intend to provide a group industry perspective as an outcome from the forum to.

Please contact Peter and I if interested in proposing a perspective to seed the discussions.

Barry Hardy

Email: barry.hardy -(at)- douglasconnect.com

SYNERGY Knowledge Assessment Launch

SYNERGY, a new 3 year European-funded Seventh Framework Research Project which commenced on the 1 February 2008, will research the knowledge sharing and collaboration support needs of stakeholders working collaboratively both internally within organisations, and within partnerships and new virtual network and business models. The project offers end user organisations an opportunity to participate in this leading edge research to address their unique requirements, to undergo a knowledge assessment of their collaboration needs, and the potential to pilot and test utility-based services developed during the project.

Swiss-based Douglas Connect will lead the SYNERGY workpackage on knowledge assessment, piloting and testing activities of application cases within industry and business contexts. To provide an opportunity for organisations to learn more about the initiative and the potential benefits of participation to them, Douglas Connect will hold a launch and networking event and Knowledge Café at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Basel, March 6 starting at 15.00. If interested in attending please contact Nicki Douglas of Douglas Connect, (Email: Nicki.Douglas –(at)- douglasconnect.com; Tel: +41 61 851 0461) to request a guest pass.

Following short presentations to inform, the event will feature peer-to-peer based Knowledge Café discussions on SYNERGY which will be facilitated by:

Prof. Keith Popplewell, Jaguar Cars Professor of Engineering Manufacture and Management, Coventry University, UK

Dr. Barry Hardy, Founder, InnovationWell & Knowledge Assessment Leader, Douglas Connect

Dr. Nenad Stojanovic, FZI Competence Center for Business Software, Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

Dr. Asha Nagesser, Managing Director, INSIDEAN GmbH

Richard Zbinden, CEO, Software for Corporate Leaders LLC

A more detailed agenda and project overview is provided in the continuation below.

Knowledge Management Training in Basel

We are running the Certified Knowledge Manager training again in Basel this April.  We had an excellent class there last year with many interactions and conversations both in the class and outside on the terrace, in an evening Knowledge Cafe on Knowledge and Leadership (which produced two articles currently being published in KM Review, Nov/Dec 07 and Jan/Feb 08 issues) and on the Knowledge Ferry on the Rhine (which along with Herman Hesse inspired the name of this Blog!) I posted some photos at http://innovationwell.net/COMTY_ckmphotos This year's Cafe will focus on Knowledge and Collaboration.  More Information and links below!

Barry

Productivity Gains enabled by ICT and KM Support Systems

Knowledge Management (KM) has from the start been a major theme of our InnovationWell community activities.  Knowledge Management in R&D was the topic of our very first InnovationWell conference held at the end of 2003, progressed in 2004 by the theme of Integrating Knowledge in the Life Science Product Life Cycle, to Drug Safety Knowledge Management and Knowledge-based Innovation in 2005, and to Critical Path and Translational Medicine applications in 2006.  More recently we have addressed additional critical knowledge management support areas of culture, collaboration, leadership, trust, innovation etc.  In these meeting sessions I have enjoyed both excellent dialogues and meeting many interesting, competent, thoughtful and inspiring people.  As we now move into becoming a community of research in addition to a community of practice, these conversations are having a significant influence on the research proposals and projects we are pursuing, and I am very much looking forward to the launch of our initial related collaborative research projects starting in 2008.

It is interesting to note from the Economist survey “Foresight 2020: Examining the Economic, Industry, and Corporate Trends of the Future” that healthcare industry executives singled out knowledge management as the highest priority area for productivity gains in the next 15 years.  Such recognition is also reflected in the key role knowledge management plays in the Critical Path Initiative and that it is one of the key 4 pillars of the Innovative Medicines Initiative launching in 2008.

Next month at Bryn Mawr (15-16 October) we return to the topic of KM in R&D by taking a look at existing ICT solutions supporting R&D activities including the increasing deployment of Collaborative electronic Research & Development (CeR&D) and Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) systems.  We will additionally explore the emerging roles and impact of approaches emerging from semantic web research, social software, web services and utility computing and Web 2.0/3.0 that are complimentary with structured IT systems to enable increased productivity and innovation success within the context of the ever increasing importance of collaboration within and between organisations working in increasingly networked global research initiatives and projects.  Cross-disciplinary thinking from fields such as organisational development and culture, cognitive science and innovation management will I maintain play key influencing roles on future integrating architectures supporting knowledge management, transfer and sharing to enable the hoped-for productivity gains of executives.

The workshop at Bryn Mawr will have a strong emphasis on peer-to-peer discussions with each workshop session involving a facilitated Knowledge Café discussion. On Monday evening we will have a Knowledge Dinner with good food and conversation menus at the Alumni House, whereas on Tuesday evening we will have a poster session, drinks reception and buffet dinner in Thomas Great Hall.

For Poster Presentations, you can present as a traditional poster or setup a computer-based presentation of software for discussion.  Wireless and Internet connectivity are available. Abstracts ca. 300-500 words should be sent to me.

We will discuss and share experiences with current information and communications technology (ICT) supporting R&D, to discuss current requirements and short term needs with electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) systems, collaboration support and knowledge tools supporting R&D, and to create a shared vision and roadmap for next generation knowledge management (KM) support systems. A wiki will be opened prior to the workshop to commence group documentation of supporting materials and to help to populate the workshop program with introductory materials, suggestions, ideas and experiences.  The wiki will continue to be available after the workshop for supporting continuing interactions in 2008.

Presentations to seed Discussions
Dimitris K. Agrafiotis, Vice President of Informatics, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, LLC; The ABCD ELN: Towards a Fully Integrated Discovery Enterprise
Frank Guerino, CEO, TraverseIT; Semantic-based Frameworks for Enterprise Content Management
Carl Elkin, Principal Scientist, Schering-Plough; Building Knowledge Infrastructure: A Bottom-up Wiki in a Large Company
David Gilmour, CEO, Tacit; Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Sharing - Implications for Enterprise Knowledge Management
Alex Heiphetz, CEO, Delta L Training; Training Simulations and Metrics in Second Life
Marisol Wesson, CEO, TMS; Enterprise Knowledge Portals and Application Integration for supporting Collaboration
Richard Lysakowski, President, CENSA; Collaborative eR&D - Vision and Strategy to Product Realities
Jeff Spitzner, CSO, Rescentris; Research Knowledge Management for the Post-ELN Era: Envisioning a Multi-Scale 'Scientist's Desktop' with Unified Information Services, Management and Collaboration
Gladys Range, Consulting Engineer; GVR Systems Automation, Semantic Knowledge Infrastructures and Services for R&D

Program Brochure: http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/files/KMWorkshopBrynMawr07web2.PDF

More Information at: http://www.innovationwell.net/COMTY_kmworkshopbrynmawr07

eCheminfo InnovationWellinformatics IT KM ICT bioinformatics software Computer Science Software Engineering Software Design Software Development Virtual Environment Virtual Organisation Virtual Worlds Virtual Work Virtual Teams Virtual Laboratory Semantic Web Social Software Enterprise Software Enterprise Systems Enterprise Knowledge Information Systems Information Science Information Technology Chemistry Biology ELN Electronic Lab Notebook Lab Notebook Electronic Laboratory Notebook LIMS R&D pharmaceutical pharma meeting workshop training Philadelphia Knowledge Management innovation collaboration Research Pharma Drug Discovery Research and Development Drug Development Healthcare events

International Cooperation in Predictive Toxicology

A variety of initiatives of relevance to the development of ADME/Toxicology resources of value to supporting improved productivity in drug discovery and development are in progress in different organisations and countries.  There is potential for great benefits for collaboration and alignment between such initiatives so as to support the robust development of the emerging field of predictive toxicology and to advance goals related to heathcare safety and development as expressed in the FDA's Critical Path Initiative in the USA and the EU's Innovative Medicines Initiative in Europe.

To further development and progress in this area we are scheduling the following activity:

International Forum & Workshop on Cooperation on ADME/Tox
18-19 October 2007
to take place at the Community of Practice Meeting, Autumn 2007
a joint InnovationWell and eCheminfo InterAction Meeting
Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia
http://www.echeminfo.com/COMTY_conferences

This forum and workshop will have an agenda developed by workshop leaders to address ways forward for international cooperation and including discussion of the following topics:

• latest advances in QSAR and ADME/Tox methodologies and resources
• impact of government and regulatory policy and legislation in the US and Europe
• potential and barriers for replacing animal testing by alternative approaches
• actions for data integration and knowledge sharing between initiatives
• the role of semantic web approaches in uniting structured data from multiple resources
• the role of natural language processing for processing unstructured information
• extraction of data from the scientific literature
• methods and procedures for secure testing of commercial data that could be acceptable to industry
• application of advanced search and agent technologies
• frameworks for computational model testing and validation
• impact of knowledge management approaches
• collaboration and community support structures and environments

The agenda of the forum and workshop will be designed by a set of workshop leaders so as to maximise interaction, discussion, issue resolution, and action plans for cooperation.  In addition to presentations on latest developments, workshop activities will address specific challenges to progress in the field and areas where collaboration can support integration and alignment of programs and resources and reduction of duplication.  An Innovation Cafe format will be used in which the group will define a scenario in which optimum confidence in predictive toxicology methods has been reached and will then prioritize steps for achieving that goal.  The resulting roadmap should provide action plans where cooperation between initiatives can accelerate the contribution of predictive toxicology methods to enhanced confidence in safety of new healthcare products and progressing the goal of reduction and replacement of animal testing by computational methods.  Virtual communication and collaboration approaches will be used pre- and post-event to maximise the benefit of the workshop.

Workshop leaders are being invited from the US and Europe and will include representatives from industry, government and academia.

Barry Hardy

Community of Practice Manager

eCheminfo InnovationWell cheminformatics chemoinformatics bioinformatics Medicinal Chemistry Computational Chemistry Virtual Screening ADME ADMET toxicology Molecular Modelling Molecular Modeling pharmaceutical pharma meeting workshop training Oxford Critical Path toxicology Bursary Life Sciences Pharma Drug Discovery Research and Development Drug Development Healthcare Innovation Knowledge Management events

InnovationWell Interest List and Signup

You can join our InnovationWell interest list (managed by Constant Contact) to be kept posted on news related to our community of practice activities using the following signup form:

Join Our Mailing List

Email:

Barry Hardy

InnovationWell Community of Practice

Program for InnovationWell & eCheminfo InterAction Meetings

I summarise below the list of sessions with over 100 top speakers and discussion leaders for the program listing for the upcoming Autumn InterAction Meetings taking place in Philadelphia and Basel. Please add a traceback or link for other like-minded folk to find!

I also provide an electronic brochure for download here for the InnovationWell Autumn Program on Knowledge-based Innovation in Life Science Product Development:

Download InnovationWell-ProgramAutumn05.PDF

And the equivalent eCheminfo brochure on Drug Discovery:

Download eCheminfo-ProgramAutumn05.pdf

Note: The poster sessions will be run as electronic poster sessions using tabletop spaces, a wireless network and Internet facilities at the meetings, in addition to virtual access through the website, i.e., the posters will be electronic but the access can be face-to-face or virtual. You can participate in person and virtually in the poster sessions.  We can supply nourishment and refreshments locally; remote participants may have to order out! [We also expect, subject to on-site testing, to have live conference call capabilities for remote participating members to join local discussions.]  Anyone interested in presenting such an "electronic poster" should directly contact us via email at innovationwell at douglasconnect.com

Look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia or Basel!

Barry Hardy
Community of Practice Manager
Douglas Connect
http://douglasconnect.com/
+41 61 851 0170 (office)

InnovationWell & eCheminfo InterAction Meetings
Philadelphia, US, 11-12 October 2005 and Basel, Switzerland, 9-10 November
List of Sessions with Speakers & Schedule (InterAction Autumn Meetings)
http://innovationwell.net/ and http://echeminfo.com/

Registration to attend the meetings or to access virtually is available through the websites or through contacting Nicki Douglas [nicki.douglas at douglasconnect.com]

InnovationWell eCheminfo meeting workshop conference management executive drug safety KM Life Sciences Pharma Drug Discovery Drug Development Healthcare Innovation Informatics Knowledge Management events

…PROGRAM LISTING CONTINUING IN FULL POSTING…..